IBN SINA

IBN SINA, Abu 'Ali al-Husayn b. 'Abd Allah b. Sina, known in the West as
Avicenna. He
followed the encyclopaedic conception of the sciences that had been traditional
since the time
of the Greek Sages in uniting philosophy with the study of nature and in seeing
the perfection of
man as lying in both knowledge and action. He was also as illustrious a
physician as he was a
philosopher [see hikma].

Life.

His life is known to us from authoritative sources. An autobiography covers his
first thirty years,
and the rest are documented by his disciple al-Juzajani, who was also his
secretary and his
friend.

He was born in 370/980 in Afshana, his mother's home, near Bukhara. His native
language was
Persian. His father, an official of the Samanid administration, had him very
carefully educated
at Bukhara. His father and his brother were influenced by Isma'ili propaganda;
he was certainly
acquainted with its tenets, but refused to adopt them. His intellectual
independence was served
by an extraordinary intelligence and memory, which allowed him to overtake his
teachers at
the age of fourteen.

It was he, we are told, who explained logic to his master al-Natili. He had no
teacher in the
natural sciences or in medicine; in fact, famous physicians were working under
his direction
when he was only sixteen. He did, however, find difficulty in understanding
Aristotle's
Metaphysics, which he grasped only with the help of al-Farabi's commentary.
Having cured the
amir of khurasan of a severe illness, he was allowed to make use of the splendid
library of the
Samanid princes. At the age of eighteen he had mastered all the then known
sciences. His
subsequent progress was due only to his personal judgment.

His training through contact with life was at least equal to his development in
intellectual
speculation. At the age of twenty-one he wrote his first philosophical book. The
following year,
however, the death of his father forced him to enter the administration in order
to earn his
living. His judgment was swiftly appreciated. Having consulted him on medical
matters, the
princes had recourse to him also in matters of politics. He was a minister
several times, his
advice being always listened to; but he became an object of envy, sometimes
persecuted by his
enemies and sometimes coveted by princes opposing those to whom he wished to
remain loyal.
He took flight and was obliged to hide on several occasions, earning his living
by medical
consultations. He was imprisoned, escaped, lived for fourteen years in relative
peace at the court
of Isfahan and died at Hamadan, during an expedition of the prince 'Ala' al-Dawla,
in 428/1037.
He was buried there; and a monument was erected to him to celebrate the (hidhri)
millenary of
his birth.

If his works are to be understood, they should not be thought of as those of a
philosopher who
lived in his books. He was occupied all day by affairs of state, and he laboured
by night on his
great works, which were written with astonishing rapidity. He was never safe,
and was
frequently compelled to move; he would write on horseback, and sometimes in
prison, his only
resource for reference being his memory. It has been found surprising that he
differs from
Aristotle in his works: but he quoted him without re-reading him, and, above
all, his
independence of mind inclined him to present his own personally worked out
thought, rather
than to repeat the works of another. Besides, his personal training was
different. He was a man
who lived in touch with the concrete, constantly faced with difficulties, and a
great physician
who dealt with specific cases. Aristotle's Logic seemed to him insufficient,
because it could not be
applied in a way that was sufficiently close to life. Many recent controversies
have been aroused
since the study of his works has increased, especially at the time of his
millenary, but the most
plausible view of his personality is still the following: he is a scientific
man, who attempts to
bring the Greek theories to the level of that which needs to be expressed by the
study of the
concrete, when apprehended by a great mind.

The secret of his evolution, however, will remain concealed from us as long as
we do not possess such important works as the Kitab al-Insaf, the 'Book of Impartial Judgment',
which investigated 28,000 questions, and his 'Eastern Philosophy', of which we have only a
fragment.

Works.

The corpus of Ibn Sina's works that has come down to us is considerable, but
incomplete. To the
mmany questions that were put to him he replied hastily, without always taking
care to keep his
texts. Al-Dhuzadhani has preserved several of these; others have been
transmitted with different
titles, others lost. The manuscript of the Insaf disappeared at the sack of
Isfahan, in his own
lifetime. The fundamental bibliography is that which al-Juzajani included in
his biography,
but it is not exhaustive. G. C. Anawati lists a total of 276 works, including
texts noted as
doubtful and some apocryphal works, in his bibliography of 1950. Mahdavi, in
1954, lists 131
authentic, and 110 doubtful works. Ibn Sina was known primarily as a philosopher
and a
physician, but he contributed also to the advancement of all the sciences that
were accessible in his day: natural history, physics, chemistry, astronomy, mathematics, music.
Economics and
politics benefited from his experience as a statesman. Moral and religious
questions (not
necessarily pertaining to mysticism), qur'anic exegesis, statements on ufi
doctrine and
behaviour produced minor writings. He wrote poetry for instructional purposes,
for he versified
epitomes of logic and medicine, but he had also the abilities of a true poet,
clothing his philosophical doctrine in images, both in verse (as in his poem on the soul) and
in prose, in
symbolic narratives whose meaning has given rise to controversy [see hayy b.
yaqzan].

Medicine is the subject of separate works; but natural history and mathematics
are thought of as parts of philosophy. Thus, his principal treatise on these sciences is included
in the great Kitab al-Shifa', 'Book of Healing [of the Soul]', in the same way as that on
Metaphysics, while the
famous qanun fi 'l-tibb, 'Canon of Medicine', is a separate work.

The qanun appears to have formed a more consciously coherent whole than the
philosophical
works. Because it constituted a monumental unity, which maintained its authority
until modern
times when experimental science began, and because it still remained more
accessible than
Hippocrates and Galen, it served as a basis for seven centuries of medical
teaching and practice.
Even today it is still possible to derive useful information from it, for Dr. 'Abd
Allah Ahmadieh, a
clinician of Tehran, has studied the therapeutics of Avicenna and is said to use
them with good
results, particularly in treating rheumatism.

The qanun is the clear and ordered 'Summa' of all the medical knowledge of Ibn
Sina's time,
augmented from his own observations. It is divided into five books. The first
contains
generalities concerning the human body, sickness, health and general treatment
and
therapeutics (French translation of the treatise on Anatomy by P. de Koning,
1905; adaptation
giving an incomplete resume of the first book, in English, by Cameron Grüner,
1930). The
second contains the Materia Medica and the Pharmacology of herbs; the page on
experimentation in medicine (115, of the Rome 1593 edition) quoted in the
Introduction to the
French translation of the Isharat, 58, is to be found there. This passage sets
out the three
methods--agreement, difference and concomitant variations--that are usually
regarded as
characteristic of modern science. The third book deals with special pathology,
studied by
organs, or rather by systems (German translation of the treatise on diseases of
the eyes, by
Hirschberg and Lippert, 1902). The fourth book opens with the famous treatise on
fevers; then
follow the treatise on signs, symptoms, diagnostics and prognostics, minor
surgery, tumours,
wounds, fractures and bites, and that on poisons. The fifth book contains the
pharmacopoeia.

Several treatises take up in isolation a number of the data in the qanun and
deal with particular
points. Some are very well-known: their smaller size assured them of a wide
circulation. Among
the most widely diffused are treatises on the pulse, the medical pharmacopoeia,
advice for the
conservation of health and the study of diarrhoea; in addition, monographs on
various remedies, chicory, oxymel, balsam, bleeding. The virtues of wine are not
neglected.

Physicians were offered a mnemonic in the form of a poem which established the
essentials of
Avicenna's theory and practice: principles, observations, advice on therapeutics
and dietetics, simple surgical techniques. This is the famous Urjuza fi 'l-tibb, which was
translated into Latin several times from the 13th to the 17th century, under the title Cantica
Avicennae (ed. with French
trans. by H. Jahier and A. Noureddine, Paris 1956, Poeme de la Medecine,
together with
Armengaud de Blaise's Latin translation).

Ibn Sina's philosophical works have come down to us in a mutilated condition.
The important
Kitab al-Shifa' is complete (critical text in process of publication, Cairo
1952-). Extracts chosen by
the author himself as being the most characteristic make up the Kitab al-Najat,
'The Book of
Salvation [from Error]', which is not an independent redaction, as was thought
until 1937
(table of concordances established by A.-M. Goichon in La distinction de
l'essence et de l'existence
d'apres Ibn Sina, 499-503). The Kitab al-Isharat wa 'l-tanbihat, 'Book of
directives and remarks', is
complete (trans. into Persian and French), as is the Danishnama-i 'Ala'i, 'The
Book of Knowledge
for 'Ala'", a resume of his doctrine written at the request of the prince
'Ala' al-Dawla. We
have only fragments of the Kitab al-Insaf, 'Book of Impartial Judgment between
the Easterners
and the Westerners', which have been published by A. Badawi, and a small part of
the Mantiq al-mashriqiyyin, 'Logic of the Easterners', which is the logic of his 'Eastern
Philosophy', the rest
of it being lost. A fairly large number of minor writings are preserved; they
illuminate points of
detail which are often important, but are far from completing the lacunas.

Ibn Sina's was too penetrating a mind, and one too concerned with the absolute,
not to venture
outside the individual sciences. He looked for the principle and the guarantee
of these, and this
led him to set above them, on the one hand, the science of being, Metaphysics,
and, on the
other, the universal tool of truth, Logic, or 'the instrumental science', as the
falasifa termed it.

As far as one can tell in the absence of several of his fundamental works, he
seems to have been
an innovator particularly in logic, correcting the excess of abstraction which
does not permit
Aristotle to take sufficient account of change, which is present everywhere and
at all times in
the terrestrial world; and, thus, of the difference between strict (mutlaq)
meaning, and concrete
meaning, specified by the particular 'conditions' in which a thing is
actualized. As a physician,
he enters into logic when he admits a sign as the middle term of a syllogism. He
gives it the
force of a proof, as the latter is recognized in a symptom in medical diagnosis
(see Introduction
to the French trans. of the Isharat).

In Metaphysics the doctrine of Ibn Sina is most individual, and is also
illuminated by his
personal antecedents. On the other hand, his thought was fashioned by three
teachers, of
whom, however, he knew only two by name: Aristotle and al-Farabi, who introduced
several of
the great concepts subsequently developed by Ibn Sina. The third was Plotinus,
who came down
to him under the name of Aristotle, in the so-called 'Theology of Aristotle'
[see aristutalis],
which was composed of extracts from Plotinus's Enneads, and presented as the
culmination of
Aristotle's Metaphysics. This error of attribution dogs the whole of Avicenna's
work. As a born
metaphysician he earned the title of 'Philosopher of being' but as a realist he
wished to
understand essences in their actualized state, so that he is just as much the
'Philosopher of
essence'. The whole of his metaphysics is ordered round the double problem of
the origin of
being and its transmission to essence, but to individually actualized essence
(cf. Goichon, La
distinction de l'essence et de l'existence d'apres Ibn Sina, Paris 1937).

It is at this point that a free interpretation of Aristotle and Plotinus gives
him his theory of the
creation of forms by emanation. This is linked with a cosmogony taken from the
apocryphal
Theology, but is also inspired by hylemorphism and Aristotelian data on the
soul. The extensive
place occupied in his thought by the intelligence prompts him to this startling
view: the gift of
being is linked with the light of the intelligence. Moreover, Ibn Sina is a
believer; in accordance
with Islam he believes in God as the Creator. None of the philosophies handed
down from
pagan antiquity takes account of this. He attempts to integrate dogma with his
philosophical
formulation. In fact, he does not succeed very well, but he continually works in
this direction.

The first certitude apprehended by the human mind, he says, is that of being,
which is
apprehended by means of sense-perceptions. The idea of being, however, is so
deep-rooted in
man that it could be perceived outside of the sensible. This prefiguration of
the Cartesian
'Cogito ergo sum' appears to have two causes: intuition (hads) is so powerful in
Ibn Sina (see in
the Physics of the Danishnama the part that it played for him) that he bases
himself here on a
metaphysical apprehension of being; in addition, since the human soul, according
to him, is a
separate intelligence, which leads its own spiritual existence while being
united with the body, it
is capable of apprehending itself directly.

The second certitude is that the being thus apprehended in man, and in every
existing thing, is
not present there of necessity. The essence of 'man', 'horse' or 'stone' does
not imply the
necessity of the existence of a particular man or horse. Existence is given to
actualized, concrete
beings by a Being that differs from all of them: it is not one of the essences
that have no
existence in themselves, but its essence is its very being. The Creator is the
First Cause; as a
consequence of this theory the proof of the existence of God is restricted to
Metaphysics, and not
to Physics, as happens when God is proved to be the prime mover.

A Western controversy enters here: did Avicenna really believe in the analogy of
being? It is
true that he does not place the uncreated Being in the genus Substance or in a
genus Being; but
if he proceeds from knowledge of created beings to that of the uncreated Being,
is not this a
proof that he considers their natures to be allied? He certainly apprehends an
analogy between
the being of substance and that of accident, as he states explicitly, but did he
go further? (see M.
Cruz Hernandez, passim).

Ibn Sina did not formulate the distinction between the uncreated Being and
created beings as
clearly as did Thomas Aquinas, but the latter does base himself on Ibn Sina's
doctrine; only
being is in God, God is in no genus and being is not a genus. He then sets out
his thought
precisely (cf. Vasteenkiste, Avicenna-Citaten bij S. Thomas, in Tijdschrift voor
Philosophie, September
1953, citations nos. 12, 13, 14, 15, 20, 148, 330, pp. 460-1, 473 and 491).

With the principles established, two reasons for the omission of the conclusion
are plausible, but
neither involves the distinction not being made. Either, having set it out and
admitted it, he withdrew it with difficulty because of the confusion between the data of
Aristotle and Plotinus,
or, as G. M. Wickens (Avicenna, scientist and philosopher, 52) suggests, he does
not speak of it as a
discovery because the celebrated distinction was then generally admitted--as Abu
Hayyan al-Tawhidi says. But Ibn Sina maintains that God, as he conceives Him, is 'the
first with respect
to the being of the Universe, anterior to that being, and also, consequently,
outside it' (E. Gilson, L'esprit de la philosophie medievalet, 80-1).

However, this apparent impetus of Ibn Sina is interrupted by the data of
Plotinus, for they
inspire the emanatist theory of creation. The qur'an, like the Old and New
Testaments,
explains creation by a free act of will on the part of God. For Ibn Sina, by way
of Plotinus, the
necessary Being is such in all its modes--and thus as creator--and being
overflows from it.
(Here the reader will ask himself the question: 'Is it an analogous being? is it
not rather the
same being?') Moreover, this emanation does not occur freely, and creation
involves
intermediaries, which are also creators. From the One can come only one. The
necessary Being
thus produces a single Intelligence. This, having a cause, necessarily possesses
a duality of being
and knowledge. It introduces multiplicity into the world; from it can derive
another
Intelligence, a celestial Soul and a celestial body. Ptolemy's system becomes
the framework of
creative emanation; emanation descends from sphere to sphere as far as a tenth
pure
Intelligence, which governs, not a sphere, but our terrestrial world, which is
made, unlike the
others, of corruptible matter. This brings with it a multiplicity which
surpasses human
knowledge but is perfectly possessed and dominated by the active Intellect, the
tenth
Intelligence. Its role is demonstrated in a poetic and symbolic form in the
'Tale of Hayy b.
Yaqzan", a name that refers to the active Intellect itself.

The philosophical origin of this active Intellect is the passage in the De Anima
in which Aristotle
refers by this name to the active part of the human soul. Ibn Sina irremediably
mutilates the
latter by taking away from it this active part, and with it its most noble
action and its highest
intellectual function: abstraction of intelligibles. This active Intellect,
which, according to
Aristotle, produces all intelligibles, is now a separate Intelligence. Thus the
human soul receives
them passively, and so cannot think except by leave of the Intellect;
comprehension, knowledge
and the sciences are now no longer its affair. It can elaborate only that which
is given to it by
the active Intellect. The latter produces not only these intelligibles but also
all the substantial
forms that are created in accordance with the models that it has conceived in
conformity with
the potentialities of matter. It is in this way, Ibn Sina replies to Plato's
anxious question (Parmenides, 131 a-b), that the concrete being can share in the Idea. The active
Intellect has an
ability which Plato sought for in vain: it apprehends the two series of relative
perceptions, both
the forms with their mutual relationships and the concrete beings with their
mutual
relationships; in addition, it apprehends their common repository, which is its
own essence (cf. Goichon, La theorie des formes chez Avicenne, in Atti XII congr. intern. de
filosofia, ix, at 137-8). A reply
is also given to the question of Aristotle as to the provenance of form and the
contribution of the
Ideas to sensible beings (Metaph., Z 8 and M 5).

The human soul by itself can attain only the first three degrees of abstraction:
sensation,
imagination and the action of estimation that extracts individual non-sensible
ideas. It then
apprehends the intelligible that is given to it from outside. Intuition is due
to its joining with the
active Intellect.

Being and intelligence overflow like a river from the necessary Being and
descend to the
extreme limits of the created. There is an equally full re-ascent, produced by
creatures' love and
desire for their creators, as far as the supreme Principle, which corresponds to
the abundance of
this gift. This beautiful concept, which could derive only from a soul inclined
towards religion,
has been thought of as mystical. The Risala fi 'l-'ishq, 'The Epistle on Love',
however, is
primarily a metaphysical explanation of the tendency of every being towards its
good, and a
physical explanation of the motion of the stars; they imitate in their fashion,
which is material,
the unceasing action of the pure Act. The spheres, in fact, thus imitate the
unceasing desire of
the celestial Souls which correspond to each one of them. The rational soul of
man tends
towards its good with a conscious motion of apprehension of, and love for, the
active Intellect,
and, through it, for the necessary Being, which is pure Good. In the highest
states, however, it
can tend directly towards the latter.

Ibn Sina believed firmly in the immortality of the soul. Corruption cannot touch
it, for it is
immaterial. The proof of this immateriality lies in its capability of
apprehending the intelligibles,
which are in no way material. He is much more hesitant on the question of the
resurrection of
the body, which he at first admits in the Shifa' and the Najat, and then denies
in the epistle Adhawiyya, after indicating in the 'Tale of Hayy b. Yaqzan" that this dogma
is often an
object of temptations. He appears finally to have decided to understand it in a
symbolic sense.

Among the fierce controversies to which Avicenna's thought has given rise is the
discussion as to
whether or not he should be considered a mystic.

At first sight, the whole range of expressions that he uses to speak of love's
re-ascending as far as
to the Creator leads one to an affirmative interpretation--not in an esoteric
way [see hayy b. yaqzan], but in the positive sense of the love of God. The more one studies his
philosophical
doctrine, the more one finds that it illuminates these expressions. The stages
of the ufis, studied
in the Isharat, leave rather the impression of experiences observed by a great,
curious and
respectful mind, which, however, does not participate. Ibn Sina is a believer,
and this fact should
be maintained in opposition to those who have made of him a lover of pleasure
who narrowly
escapes being a hypocrite, although there is so much seriousness in his life and
such efforts to
reconcile his philosophy with his faith--even if he is not always successful. He
is far above the
gnosis impregnated with occultism and paganism to which some would reduce him.
Is he a mystic in the exact sense that the word has in Catholic theology? It reserves
the word for one
whose whole life is a great love of God, in a kind of intimacy of heart and
thought with Him, so
that God holds the first place in all things and everything is apprehended as
related to Him.
Had it been thus with Ibn Sina, his writings would give a totally different
impression.
Nevertheless, at bottom he did perhaps apprehend God. It is in the simple
expression of
apprehension through the heart, in the secret of the heart (sirr), in flashes,
however short and
infrequent, that we are led to see in him a beginning of true mystic
apprehension, in opposition
to the gnosis and its symbols, for at this depth of the heart there is no longer
any need for words.
One doubt, however, still enters in: his general doctrine of apprehension, and
some of the terms
that he uses, in fact, in texts on sirr, could be applied at least as well to a
privileged connexion
with the active Intellect, and not with God Himself (cf. Goichon, Le 'sirr' (l'intime
du coeur) dans
la doctrine avicennienne de la connaissance). Again, on this question, the
absence of his last great
work, the 'Eastern Philosophy', precludes a definite answer.

This irreparable lacuna in the transmission of his works does not allow us to
understand in what
respects he wished to complete, and even to correct, Aristotle, as he states in
the prologue. As a
hypothesis, suggested by his constant efforts to express the concrete and by his
biography, we
may suppose that he wished to make room for the oriental scientific tradition,
which was more
experimental than Greek science. The small alterations made to Aristotelian
logic are slanted
in this direction. In metaphysics, it is probable that he was shocked by the
contradictions
between Plotinus and Aristotle that were evident in the texts which the
knowledge of the time
attributed to one single author, and that he wished to resolve these anomalies
by giving new
explanations.

Influence of Ibn Sina. The transmission of Greek science by the Arabs, and the
translation of
the works of the Arabs into Latin, produced the first Renaissance in Southern
Europe, which
began in the 10th century in Sicily, flourished in the 1tth round Toledo, and
soon afterwards in
France. The two principal works of Ibn Sina, the Shifa' and the qanun, made him
an undisputed
master in medicine, natural sciences and philosophy.

From the 12th to the 16th century the teaching and practice of medicine were
based on him.
The works of Abu Bakr Muhammad b. Zakariyya' al-Razi were also known, and he was
considered to be a better clinician; but the qanun provided an irreplaceable
didactic corpus, for
the Kitab al-Kulliyyat fi 'l-tibb of Ibn Rushd corresponded only with the first
part of the qanun. The
latter was translated in its entirety between 1150 and 1187 by Gerard of Cremona,
and, in all,
eighty-seven translations of it were made, some of which were only partial. The
majority were
into Latin, but several Hebrew translations were also made, in Spain, Italy and
the south of
France. The medical translations are less good than those of the philosophical
works; some
words transcribed in Arabic from Greek were not understood or identified, and
some Arabic
technical terms were more or less transcribed in Latin, and remain
incomprehensible. The
qanun formed the basis of teaching at all the universities. It appears in the
oldest known syllabus
of teaching given to the School of Medicine at Montpellier, a bull of Clement V,
dating from
1309, and in all subsequent ones until 1557. Ten years later Galen was preferred
to Ibn Sina,
but the latter continued to be taught until the 17th century. The editing of the
Arabic text, at
Rome in 1593, demonstrates the esteem in which he was still held. (On the
teaching of the
works of Avicenna in the universities, see A. Germain, L'Ecole de medecine de
Montpellier ...,
Montpellier 1880, 71; Stephen d'Irsay, Histoire des universites francaises et
etrangeres des origines a nos jours, Paris 1933, i, 119; C. Elgood, A medical history of Persia ... until the
year 1932, Cambridge
1951, 205-9). Chaucer reminds us in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales that no
doctor should
be ignorant of him. Almost all, in fact, possessed either fragments of the qanun,
especially the
'Fevers' and the 'Diseases of the eyes', or shorter writings, the treatise on
the pulse or that on
'Diseases of the heart'. All Arab authors, from the 7th/13th to the 10th/16th
century, are
dependent on Ibn Sina, even though they question him, like the father of Ibn
Zuhr (Avenzoar),
or augment and correct him, like Ibn al-Nafis, who recorded his discovery of
pulmonary
circulation in his commentary on the qanun; he wrote a summary of the qanun
which any
physician could obtain more easily than he could the original text.

In the West several physicians learned Arabic for the sake of the works of Ibn
Sina. The first
known influence appears in the works of a Dane, Henrik Harpestraeng, a royal
physician who
died in 1t44. Arnold of Villeneuve, born at Valence, translated the treatise on
the diseases of
the heart, as well as some of the books of al-Kindi and other Arab authors. Some
surgeons also
quoted him as their authority: William of Saliceto in Italy, and his disciple
Lanfranc, the
founder of surgery in France; Guy of Chauliac, who died in 1368, and whose
teaching employed
Arabic terms and doctrines. At the University of Bologna, anatomy was still
being taught in
Arabic terms in the 14th century.

The Renaissance brought a violent reaction; Leonardo da Vinci rejected Ibn
Sina's anatomy,
but, for want of another vocabulary, used the Arabic terms. Paracelsus burned
the qanun at
Basle. Harvey dealt him a severe blow by publishing his discovery of the major
circulation in
16t8.

The natural sciences presented in the Shifa' were much used by the mediaeval
encyclopaedists, as
were the treatises of al-Razi and apocryphal treatises. The 'Treatise on
Animals' was translated
by Michael Scot; Albertus Magnus employed the mineralogy (on Ibn Sina's
scientific influence,
see G. Sarton, Introduction to the history of science, ii, passim.). In physics,
Ibn Sina was an
Aristotelian, and as such inferior to al-Razi, who had discovered the existence
of the vacuum,
which he himself denied. However, he opposed the theory of the transmutation of
metals, and
hence alchemy (for citations to this effect from several Arab authors, see the
introduction by
Holmyard and Mandeville to their translation of Avicennae De congelatione et
conglutinatione lapidum,
Paris 1927, 6-7).

Ibn Sina's influence in philosophy was less absolute and more disputed, but more
lasting, for the
use made of him by St Thomas Aquinas embodied certain of his proofs in Catholic
theology (cf. Goichon, La philosophie d'Avicenne et son influence en Europe medievale, Paris
1944, ch. III).

The translation of the Shifa' came at a moment when Aristotle was scarcely
known, and that
only through the 'Posterior Analytics', the 'Topics' and the 'Refutation of the
Sophists'. The
corpus that presented a 'Metaphysics', the 'Treatise on the Soul' and that on
the 'Heavens',
etc. seemed to hold another significance. It was, however, thought to be a
simple commentary
on Aristotle. For a century it received unreserved admiration; when Aristotle
was better known,
it was still thought that the Shifa' augmented his work on the subject of the
origin of the world,
on God, the soul, the intelligence and angels. He was placed in the Neoplatonist
and
Augustinian traditions; his attempts to reconcile philosophy and faith
corresponded with the
ardent desires of the Schoolmen. He was forbidden by the decrees of 1210 and
1215, referring
to 'Aristoteles et sequaces ejus', which banned Ibn Sina from the Sorbonne. But
his role
remained undiminished in private discussions.

After acclaim for his similarities with Christian thought came criticism of his
divergences from
it, violently initiated by William of Auvergne in 1230. Nevertheless, a
pontifical decree of
Gregory IX, in 1231, once more permitted the study of Ibn Sina's philosophy. The
lacunas, however, were now apparent. Nonetheless, the thought of all philosophers was
nourished by his,
to such a degree that it is impossible to tell what it would have been like
without him. Latin
scholasticism owes to his opponent, William of Auvergne, the fact that it
received from him the
distinction between essence and existence, which William considered that he had
found in him.

Another current of thought, stemming from English centres of study, developed
particularly in
the Franciscan order. It saw Ibn Sina as more of a philosopher, augmenting Saint
Augustine:
the active Intellect was like the sun of minds and the internal Master. They
believed that he
opened up a whole mystic world. Roger Bacon and Duns Scotus were influenced by
him. The
latter, however, based his doctrine of the univocity of being on the same text
that Thomas
Aquinas had used to support the opposite doctrine.

Selection was gradually practised in the corpus of Ibn Sina. He took his
definitive place, together
with Saint Thomas Aquinas. The distinction between essence and existence became
one of the
fundamentals of Thomist philosophy. It gave an explanation for the immateriality
of angels;
Saint Thomas's De Ente et Essentia is imbued with Avicennism. The better the
theologian masters
his own thought, the less he cites Ibn Sina (see the quotations in Vansteenkiste,
op. cit.), but he
still respects him. Saint Thomas's commentators, Cajetan and Jean de
Saint-Thomas, writing
respectively at the end of the 15th century and during the 17th, still allotted
to Ibn Sina the
place that he had taken in Thomism, the place that is definitely his.
(A.-M. Goichon)

Yahya Mahdavi, Bibliographie d'I. S., Tehran 1954 (critical notes in Persian,
signalizing
manuscripts, editions, translations and numerous studies on each work). All the
Persian works
of Ibn Sina were published at Tehran on the occasion of his millenary, as well
as some of the
Arabic works lists of these works and of some Persian translations of Arabic works published
in this
collection by E. Rossi, Il millenario di A. a Teheran e Hamadan, in OM, 1954,
t14-t4. For the
medical and scientific works, both texts and translations into Latin, Hebrew,
Persian and
modern European languages, published since 1497, the date of the publication of
Gerard of
Cremona's translation of the qanun, see Index Catalogue of the Library of the
Surgeon-general's Office,
U. S. Army, Washington, including works on I. S., i, 1880, 71t-3, tnd series, i,
1896, 819-t1,
3rd series, ii, 19t0, t30-1 (s.v. Avicenna), 4th series, viii, 1943, t-3 (s.v.
Ibn Sina), then Armed forces
medical library catalog, i, 1955, 11t (s.v. Avicenna).

Philosophical works: Except for the Najat, printed after the qanun, Rome 1593,
all editions of
texts are recent

al-qasida fi 'ilm al-Mantiq, ed. Schmoelders, 1836

Politics, ed. Margoliouth, 1887

al-Shifa', lithographed at Tehran 1303/1886

the opuscula edited by Mehren under the title Traites mystiques, Leiden 1889-94,
and al-Isharat,
ed. Forget, Leiden 189t, are among the oldest (see Goichon, Distinction de
l'essence et de l'existence
..., XIII-XV, 506-7, and bibliographies cited). Later publications: complete
critical text of
al-Shifa', Cairo 195t-

fasc. VI, Kitab al-Hudud, Livre des Definitions, text established, translated
and annotated by
A.-M. Goichon, 1963, augmenting by study of the Greek sources the Introduction a
A., son Epitre
des Definitions, trans. from the printed editions, and illuminated by numerous
texts taken from
the works of Ibn Sina (Paris 1933)

see the bibliographies cited, Nallino up to 1930, Ergin, Anawati, Mahdavi, A.-M.
Goichon,
Distinction ..., bibliogr. 504-t0, up to 1937, and the collection A., scientist
and philosopher, a
millenary symposium, London 195t, bibliography after each chapter